Many client applications generate video streams including multimedia players, Internet browsers, Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) applications, collaboration applications, and the like. Collaboration applications include applications that enable remote users to virtually collaborate with one another (such as CISCO WEBEX, GOOGLE HANGOUTS, MICROSOFT SKYPE, AND CISCO JABBER). As an example of a collaboration application, a virtual meeting application may enable one or more users to conduct a virtual meeting including voice streams, video streams, and/or other streams of data (e.g., documents, text, other media). Managing computational resources (e.g., bandwidth) for data streams produced by such applications can be a challenge for network operators.
A video stream is a stream of video data including packets that are delivered, by network elements, to endpoints in a network. Such video streams can include corresponding audio streams (e.g., audio of a person speaking which corresponds to moving images of the person speaking). One endpoint may be a source of the video stream while another endpoint is a destination of the video stream. A communication session may be established between the source and the destination. The communication session may be utilized to transmit and/or receive the video stream over the network. In some cases, the video stream may be delivered substantially directly from the source endpoint to the destination endpoint (e.g., delivered using network elements in a substantially directly path from the source endpoint to the destination endpoint and/or without the use of a server between the source endpoint to the destination endpoint). In other cases, a server may, at least in part, deliver the video stream from the source endpoint to the destination endpoint (e.g., where the source endpoint transmits the video stream to the server and the server transmits the video stream to the destination endpoint). Video streams can consume large amounts of bandwidth and other computational resources over a network.